


Heaven's Night

by Red_X



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:33:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25014001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_X/pseuds/Red_X
Summary: A stranger has arrived in Silent Hill. An anomaly not destined for punishment, but something far greater and terrible. As he traverses the misty town in search of answers, he discovers that even its monsters are not all they seem to be.
Relationships: Nurses (Silent Hill)/Original Male Character(s), Pyramid Head (Silent Hill)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	1. One More Soul to the Call

This was a very strange town.

He knew everything was different. Everything even looked different, but he could not for the life of him think anything other than he was running in circles, doing the exact same thing over and over. The mist was everywhere, blurring the shapes around him into indistinct shadows that his eyes refused to look at for a long time. He had no idea where he was going.

This time he ended up in a hospital, or perhaps the mental asylum? It was hard to tell, nor did he really care. It wasn't like it mattered. Nothing mattered here anymore.

Trying doors over and over. Doorknob after doorknob refusing to budge, their metal innards clicking stubbornly each time he turned. Not the same kind of click as a locked door, but the definite chittering sound that indicated something was terribly wrong and the door was broken. Not that he cared. What did it matter? Nothing mattered anymore. He crossed out the doors on the map anyway.

There were also... _things_ in this town. He had only seen a few of their figures in the fog, but their forms were too twisted for him to think that they were anything human. He always ran from them but he could never shake the feeling that he was being followed and watched.

Another door. This time the knob refused to budge, hitting an entirely natural and normal lock. He'd have to find a key later. He circled this part of the map and was turning to go when he started to hear it. _Footsteps_ , and a low, metallic scraping noise headed for him.

He had no idea how long he had been here. There was no day or night here, just the blur of gray, pitiless darkness. It must have been days. _Must_ have, but he had not ate or slept once since coming here, nor did he really feel the need to. It all just stopped. He felt that it must be days from the endless, mind-numbing hours of wandering and hiding, but it was impossible to tell. Maybe no time had passed at all and he was now stuck in this endless mire of gray and emptiness for eternity.

He didn't even remember his own name.

The sound was growing louder and he jumped, looking for a place to hide, but he was in a hallway and all the doors he had tried so far were no good. He was just about to try his luck running down the hall when the doors he just came through banged open and in came a...

Well it _looked_ like a woman, there was no doubt about that. An utterly huge and utterly terrifying woman who must have towered over him by a good few feet with a _giant pyramid for a head._ She stomped forward, her dress barely hiding her enormous hips and breasts that swayed with every movement she made. Mostly likely coming from the fact that she was dragging an enormous sword behind her that scraped across the ground from its own weight.

He was frozen to the spot, eyes glued on the woman as she approached. He had no idea where to keep his eyes, he tried to look at her...face, but they were always drawn lower, to the alluring bounce of her bosom. He was so transfixed that he almost didn't notice her pick up the blade with both hands as if it weighed nothing and swing it at his head.

Panic jolted through him and he instinctively ducked. The sword missed him by inches and slammed into the wall instead, rocks and bits of drywall pelting him as it carved a huge chuck out with the force of the blow. His heart was hammering, terror finally making his legs move and he bolted, a scream ripping out of him as he fled down the hall as fast as he could, away from the monster. He could hear her chasing after him, hear her sword swishing in the air, but nothing hit him and he was easily putting distance between them as she shuffled after him.

Even though he was obviously outrunning her, he wasn't going to take his chances. He turned down hall after hall, running blindly until he could no longer hear that horrible screeching behind him and then burst into an operating room to hide. To his surprise and luck the doors actually opened for once and he slumped against the wall, panting heavily and trying to regain some of his composure. _What in the world is that_ thing? he thought to himself, remembering how the being, the woman, was so much taller and wore an enormous pyramid on her head.

And..she had such a pair of enormous breasts...

He jerked himself out of his thoughts, shaking his head. What the hell was he thinking? That thing, whatever it was, had almost killed him! Even if he could get close to her she would probably break him in half with her bare hands or something. Why was she so large?  
  
As his breathing calmed, he began to notice something about the room he was in. He wasn't alone. It was a sound at first, a strangle crackling sound like knuckles popping. He looked up and nearly screamed to see someone else in the room with him. It was another woman, another _giant_ one at that, dressed in a nurse's outfit. Except she had no face.That wasn't nearly as creepy as it sounded, mostly because he could tell that her face was just hidden by bandages that were wrapped around it and not actually nonexistant.

He tensed, expecting an assault of some sort, but strangely the nurse did nothing, She stood there, twitching occasionally, which made the popping noise, but aside from that she did not react to his presence at all. She was clearly alive, since she was breathing huge, wet breaths that made her bosom squeeze against her tight outfit, although he still had to wonder.

The way she breathed so deeply that her buttons strained against her breasts was so distracting, he found himself mesmerized by the movement. He almost took a step forward, then his brain actually started to work and he paused in mid-step. Turning back, he opened one of the doors a crack so he could peek outside into the hall. He didn't see anything, and he couldn't hear even a whisper of a metallic screech. Good sign. He popped back in and locked the door, and it was just his luck that it actually worked this time.

Now he didn't have to worry about an ambush. He made his way over to the nurse again, slowly, still staring at her the whole time. It was the first time he had ever felt _anything_ since coming to this place. He had no need to eat or drink, he never felt tired, but the feeling this creature stirred in him was familiar and overhwleming in its intensity.

 _It only looks like a woman_ , he told himself. Yet, he found that he didn't care at all what it was or wasn't. His cock was getting hard all the same. He had tried over and over with real women in the past, to failure after failure. They just didn't seem to like him, or something seemed wrong about him in general, enough to where he had to find solace with his hand each night he thought about it. But this thing didn't care. He could sense that it didn't. The fact that it hadn't attacked him for the obvious bulge in his pants was also a good indicator as well.

He felt like he was under some sort of spell. He grabbed the nurse and she didn't resist, going willingly into his greedy hands as he stripped her, grabbing handfuls of her breasts and sucking her nipples. The taste only served to drive him more insane, wanting to enjoy all of her spread out before him. He had never felt this way before and it was so good, so delicious despite her cold skin and strange dusty smell. She was limp in his grip, responding sweetly to every touch of his but in a way that made him think that this was voluntary on her part and he hadn't just stumbled into a robot.

In a few seconds his pants were off and he was ripping her panties down to slide his cock between her thighs, simply too impatient to lay her down somewhere and do it properly. His hips thrusted into her, surrounded by cold and her thighs held him so incredibly tight that he was gasping for air. Over him he could hear her moaning. Loud and inhuman and yet that made him all the harder for her and he thrusted harder and faster, his nails clawing into her butt for support.

It was so unlike anything he had ever felt. Her skin was so strange and soft and cold, but it felt amazing against his heated length. Everything felt so sensitive around him, the slightest movement sending him into a frenzy. Usually with his hand it would take a while for him to release himself, but here he had only been at it for a few seconds before he was screaming in pleasure, unleashing his seed all over her thighs. So much of it, drawn out of him by the incredible woman he had just found. It ran down her legs all the way to her feet and he wanted more. He wanted to fill her inside so much that it would leak everywhere when she moved. Just the sight of that made his cock start to get hard again.

 _So soon?_ It had only been a few seconds ago! Yet his passion was insatiable, something almost impossible. As if sensing his excitement, the nurse finally moved and grabbed him back while still moaning and twitching. He almost had a heartattack, afraid that she was now finally about to strangle him, but that wasn't the case. Instead she knelt down, dragging her hands down his body until her face was level with his swollen cock. Then she lifted her bandages to reveal a sweet, curved pair of lips that she immediately put against his cock and began sucking.

He yelled, clawing his hands into her shoulders. Unlike the rest of her body her lips were actually hot, and they fit so perfectly around him, as if they were made to have his lenght between them. Her lips were soft and moist, gripping his dick so hard and stimulating him with each thrust down her throat. _"Ahh, ahh!"_ he was yelling incomprehensibly over and over with each new momvement. He was going to go insane if this kept up, his poor brain could hardly handle this a it was.

 _"Yes!"_ he yelled as the first wave of heat began to rush through him. Thanfully the nurse did not pull away and he ended up releasing the first wave of his semen right down her thoat. There was _so much_ of it everywhere, it felt like he was unloading his whole body into her, but the nurse didn't care. She took all of it into her mouth, finally slumping against the wall of the room when she was done.

It was an incredible sight. Her legs and mouth were wide open, showing where his seed spilled out from both to stain her messy nurse cloths. He stared for a moment before immediately feeling himself start to get aroused again.

This was insane. No one could keep up with so many climaxes at once, yet he felt as if nothing had changed. He still felt amazing, but his lust demanded him to kneel down and ram himself into her as hard as he could. Which he followed without even giving it a second thought, losing himself in the blissful storm of pleasure. She grabbed him so tightly with her walls, pulling him deeper inside even as he drowned in her wetness, wrapped up so hard in her heat that he wanted nothing more than to pull himself back out and ram into it all over again.

All the while the nurse was groaning, writhing in what was obvious enjoyment against him. Her mouth was open, so flushed and pink and he had to kiss it, had to kiss her and taste himself on her tongue. She grabbed him and pressed him against her, skin-to-skin, so lewdly on one another that they were all wrapped up in sensation and pleasure from it all. He went faster, wanting to hit her so deeply that he could leave a mark somewhere inside of her, when she all of a sudden pushed against him. He was so dazed that he didn't even notice what was happening at first and only came to awareness when he started falling. He let out a small protest that was immediately silenced by the nurse climbing on top of him, nearly engulfing him with her size while she engulfed his length inside of her.

She rode him. Fast, hard, so hard he was screaming from the feeling and getting dizzy from the fact that he couldn't stop screaming. It was so rough and _filthy,_ something vulgar about her huge hips moving against him that had him bucking into her and grabbing her thighs to shove her back against him. It was raw and insatiable. _He_ was insatiable. He had never felt like this, ever, so craving and so inexhaustible. There was some sort of deep knowledge inside of him that told him he wouldn't get exhausted, wouldn't be able to stop, that he could just keep going forever and ever until he faded away into eternity locked forever against this nurse.

He lost track of how many times he came. They were in so many different positions, so intertwined on the now-warm floor that everything seemed to blur by in a haze of which part of her he touched next and which he tasted. When he climaxed again and when the cycle started anew.

It was only broken by the harsh, jagged sound of metal shrieking as it was dragged across the floor.

Being dunked into a bath filled with ice water would have had less of an effect as that sound did. He jerked up, trance completely broken as he came back to the reality of the situation. The hospital, the misty gray town, all of it leaping to the front of his mind again with an intensity that nearly stopped his heart. He was on his feet in a second, the nurse looking up at him and whining softly at his departure, but the sound of something _slamming_ into the locked doors nearly drowned it out. He had just enough time to turn around before another slam brought the doors crashing wide open, revealing the pyramid-headed woman standing there in all of her full-bosomed terror and glory.

He stumbled back, his eyes wide and glued to her. _"W-wait!"_ he yelled, his voice hoarse after all of the shouting he had just been doing. _"Please! I don't want to die!"_

Pyramid Head did not answer him. She stood for a few moments, staring at him, before looking down at the nurse in the corner. The nurse cowered a little under the invisible stare, and when Pyramid Head jerked her head she scrambled up and ran out of the room, leaving him utterly alone.

He thought he was going to die right then and there, but then the woman did not do anything at first. Then, her hand opened and dropped the sword, where it hit the ground with the earsplittig noise of metal ringing out in a large room. _What?_ Then her hands came up to the top of her dress, which she yanked down in one short, sharp movement to show-- _oh god!!_ They were even bigger than the nurse's breasts, enormous mounds that spilled out from her body in delicious, enticing curves. They were so big he could barely believe they were real and yet here they were, as real as anything he had even seen here.

Oh this, _this_ was just... He had no idea what it was, but he knew he was taking a step forward as if drawn by an unseen force. Greedily, he grabbed enormous handfuls of her flesh and began playing with them eagerly, feeling their weight and softness under his fingers. A part of him waited for the inevitable: that this magnificent woman would get angry and snap him in half, but a louder part of him wanted to enjoy what little time he had left before she decided to pick up her weapon again.

Funny enough, she didn't react much except to lean into the touch. The rest of her dress easily fell away from her, revealing her body to him. That terrified part of him was rapidly fading away as his desire came back. _Now_ he had an entirely new beauty to admire before him. A very _twisted_ beauty but yet so delightful. A trickle of understanding began to bubble up in his mind as he laid eyes on her and how willingly she offered herself to him.

They fell together in a series of touches, losing himself in her essence as she held him close, angry and possessive. This was why he had been drawn here to begin with. He hated his life, his failures, the unchangeable cycle of waking up and going to work every single day, with no one to go home to except his own hand. He had wanted to escape that hellish world with all of his soul, and now he did. Fate had been kind enough to bring him to a world of never-ending passion, where he would always be satisfied no matter what and someone would always lust after him.

Pyramid Head was even better than the nurse. She wasn't as hot and wet but she was hard, rough, and much tighter. He felt like he was being crushed agaisnt her, and honestly he didn't mind if he never left her again. It was so easy to lose himself in her, like he was being suffocated slowly by her breasts, his energy being sucked away as he rammed into her over and over again. She was not like the nurse at all, powerful and commanding and yet so sweet when she wanted to be. Her hands grabbed him roughly, a raw need in her movements that spoke of something more primal, more base than the nurse's sweet moans.

Over and over he came and loved her. It felt like more days passed with him just sitting there with her, constantly there, their routine never breaking. He put his dick in her, between her breasts, in her hands, in every possible place he could think of that she always liked as well. Again and again, measured by how many times her came and when they would change position to start all over again...

~~~

That had been (roughly?) a couple of days ago. It was so hard to tell when he never needed to sleep or do any sort of activity that would help him measure it. He was actually surprised when his knees had started to chafe against the floor and his skin itched and grew raw. He had gotten so used to needing nothing that he had started to think that nothing at all would change in his life. Sadly, it had gotten to the point where he needed to get up and find at least some better place to stay than the floor of the hospital. To his fortune he remembered that there had been some abandoned apartments in this town, he knew that much.

All the while he was followed by his two new girlfriends, for lack of a better word. Pyramid Head always lingered behind him, towering posseively close and occasionally whirling around to wave her sword and make grunting noises at the Nurse who insisted on following him from a safer distance. He couldn't get either of them to stop no matter how hard he tried so evetually he had just given up.

At least many of the other things left him alone. His guess was that Pyramid Head just intimidated them all away which, when he thought about it, was probably for the better.

He found his way to the apartments with little problem and easily let himself in, finding the building to be much like he had found it the first time. Although now he finally had a purpose. He began checking all the rooms again, sure he would find a decent one eventually, and perhaps he could lay on a bed then.

He heard a loud noise behind him and turned in just enough time to see Pyramid Head chasing Nurse down a different hallway, her sword hoisted above her head. He sighed softly and carried on, too used to their antics by now to run after them like he had done before. They would be gone for a little while and then they would come back as if nothing happened. 

It was almost comical, watching the two of them hunt each other down like cat and mouse. And yet it was equally tragic that such a thought would occur to him. Here he was, lost and alone, and he found the antics of two monsters utterly charming. What little smile has had evaporated as he glanced down. He hadn't noticed them before, too focused on trying to escape the jaws of death before throwing himself into the cradle of lust that now occupied his new world. 

There were two scars, one on each wrist, jagged and peculiar in their shape. He had no idea how they came to pass, nor if they were even self inflicted. What troubled him, was the very real possibility that they were the very reason he had been spared from the Pyramid Woman's wrath.

So many questions. No answers. And a new place to call home that might still be the death of him. 


	2. Rain of Brass Petals

Time rapidly slipped away, dwindling like an hourglass, but not in the sense that it was running out. More like the glass had turned into a loop, and the sands were spinning endlessly in a cycle that never ended. Every day was different, and yet it was mind-numbingly the same until it reached a point where he was not even bothered by it anymore. Everything in his life had seemed to turned into the same, monotone gray as the persistent fog that blanketed the town of Silent Hill.

He had wandered, for a little while. Walking amidst the streets, feeling as isolated as if he was in the middle of the ocean, considering he could only see a few feet in front of him at any given time, with the buildings flanking him on the road rising as huge silhouetted behemoths. Despite that, it had rarely been quiet, as one might expect. He could hear shuffling, moaning, and heavy panting, along with the occasional sound of _click-click,_ like long nails upon pavement. All of it was enough to make the skin crawl. And on more rare occasions, he heard the distant scraping of the pyramid-headed woman's enormous sword as she dragged it across the ground. Usually this was accompanied by one of the other noises falling silent.

The figures that found him, the nurse, followed him, though only made herself known at the strangest of times. Once when he thought his loneliness would eat him alive, right before he found the Wood Side Apartments.

The sign leaped out at him by chance, and he found himself stopping in front of it and staring for several minutes before he began moving. Not to keep walking, but to go inside. He did not expect the front door to work, except it did.

He had the strange, deeply unsettling feeling, that the door had unlocked itself for him, though. As if it would be locked for anyone else, but he was a special exception to the rule.

The empty, almost desiccated, building spread out for him like an open husk of a corpse, gutted, with scraps of skin and muscle still clinging to long dead bone. The carpet was old, but not dusty. The wood around him creaked and sighed, almost as if sagging, but when he blinked it was straightened again. He could not tell what was wrong—if it was in disrepair due to long age, or if the place was vandalized in the past and had never been repaired. Somehow, it seemed to be both and neither at the same time. The age of many years was upon the innards of the apartments, and while they were not collapsed yet, something told him no one would ever live here again. It was...frozen.

He wandered the halls, curious but uncertain, and tried to first door he saw.

His breath ripped from him in a gasp as the shadowy figure of a woman spun around to look at him, terror in every piece of movement. There was another figure near her too, parting as if caught in the act of something, a man he thought, for it was larger, but before he could even apologize for intruding she was gone like that. Like smoke in the wind.

It left him staring in puzzlement, wondering what had happened and if—what he had seen was real. He had never before seen anything in this town so far that had even hinted at the existence of other people, other humans, except the human-shaped monsters. So, what was that? A ghost? He did not believe in ghosts, yet...his eyes glanced around the room, desperately seeking for answers, in a place that could provide none.

Despite what he had just seen, the room felt—and looked—as if it had not been lived in for a very long time. There was a layer of dust upon the TV, and the grayness of the bedsheets seemed due to age. It somehow felt as if he had opened a bubble into a place that was otherwise undisturbed and trapped in—in something.

There was a book upon a nightstand, which he picked up. The leather was black, and there was no title anywhere to be found. But there was a symbol in red upon the cover that he did not understand. Circles within circles, an eye at the top, staring balefully at him, and dozens of weird symbols written all within the circles. Or perhaps it was some strange alphabet? He stared at it, uncomprehending and confused, before he flipped open the book to read the first page.

_In the beginning, people had nothing.  
Their bodies ached, and their hearts held nothing but hatred.   
They fought endlessly, but death never came.   
They despaired, stuck in the endless quagmire._

_A man offered a serpent to the sun and prayed for salvation._   
_A woman offered a reed to the sun and prayed for joy._   
_Feeling pity for the sadness that had overrun the Earth, God was born from these two people._

That was the end of the first page. He blinked, and saw to his horror that the page had suddenly become incomprehensible: the letters had turned into the same ones that were written in the symbol on the front cover of the book. He turned the page, only to be confronted by more strange text, and more and more. Why could he suddenly not understand?

There was a woman crying somewhere. In this very room. He turned, but saw nothing. The crying went on and on, choked by sobs and hiccups, a lament of unbearable suffering.

His gut turned. Feeling very much like an intruder, he put the book down where he found it, and quietly exited the room and closed the door behind him.

As he looked around, though, he noticed that a door that had ot been opened previously—suddenly was. Only right at the end of the hall, at least before it turned down another hall. What was in that room that his place so clearly wanted him to see?

He made his way, with trepidation, and peeked in. At first he was stunned by what he saw. This room was...pristine. Oddly, disconcertingly so. So much that he might have left the room altogether in alarm if it was not for the fact that the Nurse was lying in wait for him, right across his bed. She beckoned to him, whimpering a little, and as if drawn by a force outside of his body, he obeyed.

She drew him closer, shoving his head between her enormous breasts, and then pressed him into the mattress so she could climb atop him.

He was panting, heavily, and grabbing her warm, yet cool, flesh in his hands, kneading it, encouraging her even as his own cock began to swell from the sinuous movements of her body. Yet her hands were gentle despite her obvious goading of him, almost caring in a way...comforting.

And when he slipped into her, it was what finally made this place...feel more like a home.

_Maternal and Personal Love Melding into One._

He did not understand why he thought of those words back then, but even now they... fit.

That had been several days—months?—ago. His first day of being in the apartments, and now that he had lost his sense of time it was impossible to tell precisely how long it had been. He knew it had not been just yesterday, or even last week, because he still knew that at least more time than that had passed, but aside from that it was impossible to say. The memories, oddly, did not fade with time like they usually did. He could clearly recall them, which just made his perception of time even more skewed.

There did not seem to be any sort of day or night in Silent Hill. He could not even tell if there was a sun—obviously there must have been, but like on an overcast day it was impossible to tell its position. No matter how much time had passed, he never saw his surroundings growing any lighter or darker, marking the passage of day and night. No matter what time of day he awoke, it was precisely the same "time" that he had slept. He now slept when he was tired, which gave him only a simple, basic idea of day and night.

Every single, solitary clock was broken or malfunctioning, not matter how much he dickered with them, he could not get them to work. Eventually he just gave up.

His days were filled with wandering. It felt so much like the Wood Side Apartments were...alive, somehow. The walls themselves seem to breathe when he was not paying attention, and always it sounded as if there were voices coming from somewhere else in the building. No matter how far and where he tried to pursue them, they always remained out of reach. But the phantoms were there.

It was like... wading through memories. Like a museum almost, with things of the past on display, but not always there for him to see. He did not know if what he saw, when he saw, were by chance, or dictated by some strange logic, cycle, or whichever, following rules he did not know.

Regardless, he knew one thing. The memories were not his. At least, a lot of them were not. Tantalizing puzzle pieces left behind by the people who once lived here, pieces of themselves left behind. Or perhaps...pieces...remembered? He frowned at that line of thought as it dissolved. He didn't even know where it came from.

So many times he thought he had pinned down something, or was onto something that would solve the mystery of this place. He had narrowed down a voice moaning, in anger rather than pain or pleasure, and when he threw open the door he froze in horrified shock as a body laid across the bed disappeared. But not before he got a perfect look at the wide, glassy eye of its owner. The other eye was gone, along with most of the man's right skull. Though his body had disappeared, that part was still stained across his bed, and the wall, and the floor. Bits of dried blood and ancient bone, like jagged white islands peaking from a red sea.

The moaning had stopped. Completely and utterly. And the aching, enormous silence that it left behind threatened to stretch until it broke the world in half.

He felt cold all over, yet strangely detached from the scene. There was a horror there, deep somewhere, but it was secondary to some other emotions he could not name. It threatened to rise in him and break free and—and—what? He had no idea what he would do then. It was not anger, it was not sadness, it was not anything he could identify. But the feeling was there all the same, like a sudden drop down, where his insides felt a force pushing against them, while everything was coming from inside of himself.

He took a step into the room, as if daring the emotion to reveal itself. But what truly caught his attention was something in the tall dressing mirror in the corner of the room. He saw movement, which was him, he knew that much, but it was what he _glimpsed_ that made him look.

It was him. But he was different. Like something he had only been peripherally aware of coming to his attention at long last. He recognized his face but... he touched his skin to make sure it was the same.

He was not...growing thinner. He would not have stated it like that. He was not eating, he knew that he had to in theory, but he simply had never felt hungry yet. Food, water, he didn't seem to need them anymore. The only thing that seemed to stir any want in him was his desire and want of pleasure, stoked by the monsters who unerringly followed him.

Which meant that his body was burning away the excess that had been there before. His flesh felt tighter over his bones, and his skin tighter over his muscles. They were standing out in more stark relief, like every little crevice in the makeup of his body was being filled, but not with useless things like fat and water. He marveled at the detail he could now see in the cords of muscles on his arms, the twining map of veins and arteries that raised along them like passages. He touched his skin. It felt tougher, somehow. Not tough enough to be like leather, but not perfectly smooth either. Was that becoming physically tough? Or simply drained of liquid?

He peered closer into the mirror, unable to look away, too focused on himself to even care about the bits of blood that coated the glass. The only thing that seemed—not _alive,_ but the proper words to describe it would _not come—_ different were his eyes. In contrast to his body, which seemed to be burning away, purifying itself until only the perfect, necessary bits of what made him alive were left behind, his eyes were bright. Sharp. Awake and alive, almost as if lit from within—like a lantern.

What color had his eyes been again? Were they supposed to be this pale?

And they were not the only things that had whitened, he noticed. His hair, too, was slowly being bleached of color, even his eyebrows. They were a pale shadow of what he once was, looking washed out, verging on ivory. He touched a strand. It was softer, now, purer. Like the truest essence of hair, nothing left behind like oils, or anything but the hair itself. He could hardly even believe it belonged to him, but it clearly did. It was growing out of his own head after all.

He stared into his own tight face, into the eyes burning back at him, at his cheekbones jutting out from under his tight skin, until his eyes ached and the image did not even make sense anymore, just his face staring and staring and—

P A L E K I N G.

He saw the words written in perfect clarity, in the blood on the mirror. Appearing all within an instance where his concentration lapsed.

Startlement made him jump, and he blinked. His lids slid across his dry eyes like sandpaper, bringing with it a sharp scrape of pain that made his lip curl. Yet there was a relief in the movement that had been denied for far too long, and he instinctively pressed his knuckles to his toughened eyes to give them a good rub, before blinking up at the mirror again.

The words were gone. He was not surprised. In fact it would have been stranger to him if they had remained there.

But what has was surprised of, however, was what he saw in the mirror this time.

Standing in the doorway of the room was her. The great wedge of her head jutting forward like a cleaver, while her breasts pressed forward just as tightly, as if to break free from her confining clothes, and her beautiful long, toned, naked legs sanding wide apart, as if anchoring her to the very earth. Her hand gripped the hilt of her sword tightly, the one thing that never left her. And her eyes, which he could not see, were unfailingly locked upon him.

"You—" he whispered, whirling around to see her, his heart racing within his chest. How could she be right _here?_ He did not even remember a single footstep, let alone the scrape of her blade."You're back."

He knew that she had never truly left. Her presence could not be escaped. But he had not _seen_ her in quite some time, and that emptiness opened a huge, black hole inside of his chest that hungrily devoured everything else he had to give.

"I missed you." The words came unbidden to him, desperate to be spoken.

As if his words were a cue, she stumbled forward, almost hurling herself. Her movements seemed just as frantic, just as longing, like lovers parted for too long, and he gratefully threw himself into her arms.

He very quickly ended up on top of her, panting with his renewed fire as he slid in and out of her ever-wet, ever needy core. It always enveloped him in a heat and tightness that could not be matched, somehow always ready for him, and driving him to utter madness faster than the most potent alcohol or drugs could ever hope to. Even this place, with its broken rules of time and physics, could ever hope to drive him to the brink of blissful madness like his Pyramid Woman could.

There were days spent in that stained room. It must have been days. With how long he seemed to spend in there, pressed on her, enveloped in her, in so many positions and ways, it felt impossible that such a time could be measured by mere hours. He was hardly tired by what they did. That was not to say he could go on forever, like his monstrous lovers seemingly could, but he knew his energy and stamina were both much greater than they used to be, and his tiredness was now a buildup over many releases, a gradual ascent into an avalanche rather than letting himself all out with only several climaxes. By the time they even thought of a break, they were so thoroughly covered with each other's fluids that their bodies, clothes, rugs and floor, whatever was nearby, were soaking as if they had come in from a rainstorm.

But, it was not he, for once, who left. It was her. He had been lying with her in a brief break, tangled in each other while he marveled her, before a shuddering wail came from far off, muffled by several walls. It was a noise of terror, of despair, and yet the way her ponderous head immediately snapped up told him the story was more than that.

And then she was gone, rising to her feet quicker than he could imagine, snatching her sword and he shambling out of the room swiftly, the scrape of her weapon heralding her passing. There was something deeply...predatory about the way she moved, and he waited until she was long gone before he rose.

He followed where he thought the noise came from. It was hard to say, as it did not come again, so he only knew the general area of where to look. But as he crept the halls, he saw that there was a door that was ever so slightly ajar. No doors had ever been left open here, aside from the one that had been chosen for him, and he had been certain in all of his past wanderings this one had never been open before. So, he pushed the door wider and went in.

Immediately a wave of anger, of desire, of terror, of deep seated breathing pawing _lust_ crawled down the back of his neck and settled into his stomach like a stone. The walls shuddered and breathed like a living thing, and the blankets were twisted insanely and curled all upon the bed in a way he had never seen before. Usually the bed he had found were either made, or disturbed, like their owner left without fixing the sheets. This was more... deliberate.

There were several pages scattered across the floor, like notebook paper, and he found their owner on a table, with several more pages sticking out from its closed covers like trailing tongues. As if someone had ripped a passage in particular out, ignoring the mess they made in the process.

He picked up the first one.

_I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. I tried to stop the thoughts. They keep coming They keep coming. They won't leave me alone. They won't leave me alone. They wont_

Endlessly repeating gibberish. The ink was pressed so hard in some places the paper had torn. He picked up another, which was stained with several large drops of blood.

_I tried to carve the thoughts out. Heard if you mess with your brain the right way, you forget everything. I'd like to. I'm sleepy now. Think I'll nap._

The writing had become more sloppy as the thoughts progressed, and with a frown he saw another page lying half covered under stack, but the bold ink across it made him single it out. He slid it out and read it.

_I DID IT. I DID IT.I DID IT. I DID IT._

_WHY DID I NEVER DO THIS BEFORE._

_I FEEL SO GOOD._

_I HATE MYSELF._

_I'M A MONSTER._

_I AM DISGUSTING, I AM VILE. I FEEL FANTASTIC._

_GOD WILL BRING US TO PARADISE AND I AM A SINNER AT HER FEET._

_A SINNER WHO REPENTS BUT DO I REPENT IF I FEEL GOOD_

An then what else had been written was abruptly cut off with a splash of ink. The writer had been pressing so hard they broke their pen.

As if that had been a cue for something, the scream came again, except it was from all around him—the room _itself_ was screaming, from every single wall, and the sounds clashed with him right in the center and it was enough to make his entire head ring with pain. He clapped his hands to his ears, and saw to his horror the bed began to move and writhe. There were _things_ under the blanket, no, no, no he was wrong.

The things _were_ the blankets.

Two figures, melding into each other, like wax statues that had been partially melted and then smashed together and left to dry again. Except they were also part of the bed itself. He could not see their faces, or even know if they had any. Their flesh was too wrapped into each other, even arms were hardly more than an impression that his eyes. 

It was hardly a passionate act. The movements were violent, cruel, and he realized with a horror _why_ the screaming was coming from this room.

He stumbled to his feet in panic as the monster shook the bed, shook the walls, the force of its actions, ones that mirrored strangulation, turned the world around it, but before he even had time to make it to the door, she appeared.

Her figure rammed through the door, the sword screeching behind her as she dragged it with little effort, and there was a great anger to her movements as she hefted it up and speared it through the attacker and his victim.

Executioner and angel of mercy, all in one. Judge and punisher.

He stared for a moment as she twisted the sword, the noise meaty and wet and sickening. He did not move though, he could only watch, captivated, as if he were witnessing a master painter complete their magnum opus. He was in utter awe of her, even as the blood pooled around her great blade. 

_The Beauty and Ugliness of True Love_

Yes, that...that _fit._ All of these monsters, all of these things, they were born of concepts and ideas. Emotions too complicated to name, of people and feelings and memories, they had to be. And yet even then he was not even sure if he was correct. Whose memories? Whose emotions? His? He had never encountered such people before (at least he hoped not) and had certainly never seen such a brutal take place before his sudden arrival. So why? What were they? What was this place?

Before he could collect his thoughts, the Pyramid Woman had vanished. The black hole inside returned with a vengeance. 


	3. Dance With Night Wind

The sight and sounds of what he had witnessed ruled his mind, and for a long time he knew no rest. He did not see Pyramid Woman since, and he did not know if it was because he was avoiding her…or if she was avoiding him. Either reason made his chest ache, like something ugly and clawed was perched inside and digging into his flesh every time he thought about it.

That…thing she had killed. What was it? What was _she?_ These things here, made from people’s thoughts, their memories, like fingerprints left behind twisted until they barely resembled where they came from, they all had to have a _reason_ behind them. There had to be sense. Nothing made sense here to him, yet it still clearly tried to follow its _own_ rules, whether or not it followed the rest of the universe’s patterns or not. There was a picture here, and he was missing several pieces.

There was confusion within him, and yet also there was a great sense of intrigue and a need to _know_ as well. He began to feel less and less afraid as time went on. Instead he was curious, and almost as if reacting to his shift in thinking, he found more doors unlocked for him in the Apartments. Doors that he knew had been locked before, and he knew no one but himself and the monsters were in here. No other human walked in the depths of this town as far as he was aware, and he could not imagine the monsters using keys to unlock doors. Most of them did not even have hands, or anything he would say would work a lock. And those that did, like Pyramid Woman, would probably just bash a door down rather than figure out how to work a key.

Occasionally he stumbled across a key, though. Either in a drawer he opened, or falling from a cabinet, but something was instinctually telling him that he was not finding these keys on random chance, he was being _given_ these keys. The more he stopping trying to fight Silent Hill, the more it accepted his presence and stopped trying to drown him. Instead it was rewarding him.

One precious gift he found was from the front desk: a small handheld radio that umped out at him when he first saw it from just how _pristine_ it looked. Brand new, in a place where everything looked old and worn. Of course when he tried to turn it on there was nothing but the soft static of dead air, of searching and not finding anything. But then the static suddenly grew louder, into a roar, right before one of the crawling figures began slithering across the floor down a nearby corridor, into sight.

He then realized that the radio could tell him how close the monsters were to him, and he kept it on him whenever he went wandering around out of his room. He knew that they could not get him while he was in there, somehow.

The scenes of the lives in this place still unfolded when he occasionally opened a new door with a new key, or even old ones if he was quick enough on visiting his old haunts. But still, many of them just provided more questions and no answers. Some of the phantoms were aware of him and some not, but the monsters were definitely aware. The skinned dogs that patrolled the corridors he learned to easily avoid. Their huge claws always clacked loudly on the floors and gave them away, and that was before he found the radio.

And with his exploring, adventurous mind now turned to discovering Silent Hill rather than just aimlessly wandering, he began to pay more attention to what he saw.

There was a room that was untouched, as if the owner had left, but there was a large knife on the bed. Placed almost ceremoniously there. He took it before he left, and noticed with a bit of alarm that the bathroom—its door left half-open—had a bathtub inside filled with dark, murky water.

He did not get closer to examine what was inside, just as much as he ignored the sound of dripping water, and the ripple of it lapping at the edges of the tub.

Another room had walls that at first looked as if they were rotting and black, and he nearly choked on the stench that poured out as he swung open the door, as if it had been damming it the whole time. It took him a moment of examination to realize that it was simply ancient, rotted blood. The bed was covered in it, as was the walls, the floor, the _ceiling_ even had wide streaks of it…as if someone had brutally murdered a dozen people inside without cleaning up. There was no way all of the blood could have belonged to just one person, that was impossible.

 _“No,”_ came the soft, sobbing, terrible moan that had led him here to begin with. _“No…no…no...”_ An endless mantra. It was coming from the bed. And when he peered closer, he could see that there was still fresh blood upon it. Still shining wetly in the light of the lamp.

He left before Pyramid Woman could show up again. Before some new nightmare could manifest itself, trapped in its own memory of suffering.

One of the rooms that surprised him the most was one that was simply a wide, gaping hole in the middle of the floor. Wood torn away to make jagged teeth around the edges, with broken concrete and metal pipes from the lower infrastructure being shorn completely through by whatever had created it. Most disturbingly, the hole went straight down, its walls offering no handholds or natural formations whatsoever, telling that something had managed to create it, rather than the floor simply giving way due to some tragic accident.

He had very nearly fallen in headfirst as he entered through the door, and gasped at the enormous black depth that yawned in front of him, ancient and endless. He peered inside, frightful, but did not see any bottom that he was aware of. But, it was too dark to see. It could have been a few feet or a hundred miles deep for all he knew.

But when a noise started to come from the depths, something large and dark and wet and sliding and bubbling and hissing and all the gibbering noises of ten thousand madmen, he quickly fled before he could meet the owner of it.

It was two days after that when he…

He was beginning to understand the days better. Understand time better. The things he was seeing were both here and not here, because time did not follow a line. It was a circle, with everything happening all at once. As he grew accustomed to Silent Hill, it let him understand more. He either became one with the town, or it would swallow him whole.

But he knew it was _two days,_ definitely, when he returned to the first room he had opened. The one that began the first of his many questions.

The crying was still there, but not the woman, nor the man. Her invisible tears suffused the air with a deep sense of suffering, of hurt and horror and pain, pain wrapped so tightly coiled around her body that she could not separate herself from it. He did not intend to linger, and with a few quick steps crossed the room and picked up the black book from the nightstand. The language was as incomprehensible as ever, but that did not stop him this time as he turned and left.

The sobbing stopped as he closed the door. Completely. In fact the entire apartment building was silent.

It was watching him. The book in his hand felt as heavy as a stone and burning as a furnace.

He paused for a moment, unease filling him. Then he steeled himself and walked away, pulling down the sleeve of his shirt to check his inner wrist.

The scar there leaped into view, even more pale than his normal pale skin. Even tighter and more prominent with his tightening skin. A pattern again, of circles and letters and a triangle, but none making sense. But…it was different than the one on the cover of the book. He had no idea if that was actually a good thing or not, if he should feel _relieved_ or not.

All the notes he found in the room, the one of the damned man, were they the final thoughts of his dying self? His last burst of clarity before he was punished? Something about it was still unsettling him. He thought that the book might help answer, but it was not being helpful. He had read it before, read the words as clearly as if they had been in English but now it was still gibberish. Why did they change? Did the letters change or had he somehow been reading the strange language when he understood the words?

There was religion in this place. He knew that from what he had glimpsed before in the book, but something about it seemed strange. He did not know why. He did not remember anything about his life before he came here. But he felt as if this was something new. One he had never heard before. Something about the words he had read kept buzzing around in his mind like a swarm of angry bees, trying to reach some corner that was—like a locked door. Like all the locked doors in this town. Impervious to all the attempts he made to try and break it down.

But he knew who could very possibly hold the answers he sought. He looked up and saw the door to “his” room was open, once again. Spurred on by a knowledge that was more deep and instinctual than it was governed by his mind, he stepped forward and entered to find the Nurse upon his bed. Her visits had started to become more frequent, as if she had sensed his recent troubled mind and came continually to soothe him, over and over.

As she always did.

The Nurse noticed him come in, of course. She had been waiting for him. Her bandaged, hidden face could show no emotion, but he saw the neediness in the curve of her body as she sat up and held out her hand enticingly to him, silent begging him to take it. In fact she seemed almost coy and girlish, blooming more and more into something more than a monster every time he laid with her.

Before, he would have had little will or desire to resist her. Now that he was throwing off the shackles that Silent Hill had bound him by before, he had plenty of both. He approached her, and took her hand, but as she leaned forward to try and kiss him, he placed a finger to her face, right over where her lips would be.

The bandages did not feel like bandages. It felt more like skin that had shifted its texture and appearance to look exactly like gauze, and it took more of his newfound will not to jerk away in an instinctual horror. But they _were_ bandages before, why did so many things here suddenly shift and change with no rhyme or reason?

He felt her great confusion as she looked at him. Before he had never resisted her, always had gone along willingly to everything she did, and now he was not. He was growing a sense of will, in a place where nothing was governed by free will and thoughts of their own. Her hand gripped his a little, clearly afraid, but he had to free himself so that he could roll up his sleeves to reveal the marks on his wrists.

A ring shape, made by one circle inside of a larger circle, with the inner section covered in the mysterious letters. In the center was a triangle, and inside of the triangle was a waving pattern he could not understand. It was a far less intricate symbol than the one on the book, but somehow he could feel that it was no less important. He pointed at one of the marks, with fervor, and then the other one, the demand clear in his movements.

_How did I get here? I must have taken my own life to get these scars. But this place is not an afterlife of judgment, so why am I here?_

He could sense her nervousness. Her hands trembled lightly, and her breath rose a little, pressing her beautiful bosom tighter against her uniform. She could not stop looking at the symbols on his wrists and he knew—he simply knew again, that they frightened her. She _knew_ what those symbols were, but she could not tell him. She would have liked nothing better than for him to forget about them and all the things he was thinking, but…

Why was he aware of her thoughts? How could he read her emotions so well? It was as if they bled into the air around him.

Before he had any chance to react, she lunged for him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders an dragging him back down to the bed with her. He ended up landing on top of him, and she held his face in her hands and kissed him while her body danced frantically under him and---and he had some self-control, but not so much to resist _that._

He still tried, tried to point at his wrists again, but she shook her head and kissed him and…there was a certain deliberate way she did it this time, rather than being purely fueled by lust. He was suspicious, but let himself be drawn in, especially as his desires were awakening again in a flood that had him kissing her hungrily, craving for a piece of feeling and emotion and lust, in defiance to the ashen and dead place around him. A place where one could _feel,_ where the numbing haze of Silent Hill was burned away by the pounding of blood, by groans and vivid, incredible _sensation_ all at once.

He spread her and pounded into her, as if he could get rid of all of the troubling thoughts that had been plaguing his mind just by simply tearing them out, and the Nurse writhed under him, jerking her hips in exquisite craving. She was hot, and encompassed him completely and tightly, the burning core of her an exquisite feast that scorched him like the sweet burn of alcohol. But hers was ever more potent. Her gentle, feminine voice was howling with his own, and she curved so delicately and beautifully to his needs, yearning and yearning and also stroking his face with love and gentleness and—

And it was just not _his_ face she was stroking.

He saw it as if his eyes had peeled back another set of unknown lids and—

_She was not the only Nurse. There were many more like her. Identical, yet all of them unique._

_There were the voices around him, and their owners. Screaming in pain, pleasure, sadness, madness, their faces twisted into grotesque expressions through the paroxysms of their own emotions. Men and women both, there was no distinction for what they were, but what they had done._

_Blood dripped from all of their hands. All of their mouths, their eyes. They wept tears of blood as they screamed in their torment, not just from their punishment but the weight of their own madness that ate away at their minds until nothing else was left. Ground away, like sand and water and air grinds down mountains through time._

_She was one Nurse of many. All of them “tended to” their patients. There had always been patients, since the beginning of her existence. Some stayed, some remained, but it was not their choice to stay or remain. Like refuse in a sluggish river, choked by its own pollution, the current still inexorably dragged their souls down to the churning maw, the—_

It was a thought that she was too afraid to even think about, and just as she cut off what he was seeing he felt himself climaxing, with such pleasure that he was yelling as he did, as if it dragged his very strength from him. It went on an on, and they were joined in the pure pleasure and joy of it, and he could _feel_ how overjoyed she was as well. His pleasure was an echo of something he knew before but her—she had never even tasted something this intense before he came along. Before she was just going through the emotions like she was made to do, but now it was so different.

He collapsed next to her, panting, and shuddered a little. His mind felt strange. As if she had put her hands through his skull and, with the gentlest care imaginable, had run her fingers all over the surface of his brain. He wished he could itch it somehow, as the whole inside of his skull prickled, and scratching his scalp did nothing to alleviate it.

Everything she had told him through what he had seen…he knew the images had come from her. Some sort of strange communication, not only sharing memories but thoughts and impressions and ideas and knowledge behind them. They made sense, and yet none at all. Those people, they were drawn here because of crimes they had done in the past, terrible sins that stained their souls. And their guilt, even if subconscious and something they were unaware of, drew them to this place. Silent Hill. For the reckoning they deserved.

He put himself on one elbow and looked at her, and found her already looking at him. He gestured to himself then, in confusion. Why was he here then? Did he sin too? Was he here to be punished like all the rest? Why was he still walking around if that was true?

She trembled a little, and pulled him closer to hold him tight, as if the thought of it terrified her and she wished to protect him from a world that would devour him if he let it. Her hands stroked his hair, mindlessly comforting as she always did. It was always nice, and soothing, but his questions still remain thick in the air.

Then she rolled over on top of him, and slowly sank herself down on him, rolling her hips as she did. It was a heated, incredible center of her that seemed to drive deeper down on him than she ever had before, and there was something that flashed in the space between them that he could not name. Whether it was emotion or some other sensation, he did not now, and since it did not cause him any pain he did not care.

He groaned, lost in his passion and another wave of memories and sensations rose up from his mind and throat, as if they came from him, but he knew better.

 _This is new. Different._ He _is new, different._

The creatures of this place, they knew nothing but punishment and suffering. It was what they were created for. It was what they mirrored from their subjects’ tortured, troubled minds. Read in their hearts and then crafted with brutal efficiency to mirror their worst nightmares, their sins, their deepest and darkest secrets. All of it because it was what they deserved. Every sin deserved punishment, or else there would never be peace.

_But he was different. He could suddenly see himself as she saw him: a man filled with Light and Air. Silent Hill was draped in shadows and tasted of ash and dust. Nothing but old, dark memories clung to its every surface like cobwebs, with a darker, twisted core beating underneath like a sleeping heart. But he was something that parted the ways of Silent Hill, and she was drawn to him when she first laid eyes upon him._

It defied logic. Everyone had to follow the order an way of the world. That was how the universe worked. And yet…while everyone else was using the hallways and corridors to travel, he could simply walk through the walls. His very existence was something that defied the reality of a town that routinely defied reality itself.

_The sight of him freed her, immediately made her separate from the other Nurses. And caught in her newfound, unwelcome, and sudden freedom, she had followed him and his light._

This time when they broke apart he was much more breathless and drained, taking in gulps of the ashy air gleefully as they panted together. The air was so still in this town. As if it never breathed. Like they were in a bubble that did not exist in the rest of the world, removed from sun and air and water and earth. Maybe he was breathing the very first air that had ever entered this town, forever trapped with nowhere else to go.

He never actually tried to leave here, now that he thought about it. He wondered what would happen if he would get on the main road and try.

The Nurse moved, as if preparing to leave herself, like she always did, and he quickly wrapped his arm around her waist and held her there. She went very still, though her head looked back to him in question and puzzlement. He held her tighter again, in the crook of her waist..

_I want you to stay._

She hesitated for a brief moment, then acquiesced, settling herself back near him. Her movements were graceless like her clumsy body, but he was grateful all the same. Company after such a session was always pleasant, and having her there made him feel less lonely.

They held each other for several minutes, basking in the peace, before another thought popped into his mind. He looked around for a moment before he spotted the book he had dropped on the bed. Forgotten in the heat of his passion, and he was surprised it had not fallen to the floor. He grabbed it, and brought out one of the notes of the insane man, and showed them to the Nurse pointedly.

He pointed at the book first, at the symbol on it, and then he pointed to the note. Were they connected? What was this book, even? Was this one more thing that connected to Silent Hill? He tapped the cover of the book for emphasis.

She stared at it for a long time. Even longer than she had at his scars. But he did not sense nervousness from her now. Not fright. But there was something she was instinctively holding back in her heart. Something that she did not wish to give him, yet she could not lie or deceive him when he asked a direct question. But it was a question she did not truly _want_ to answer.

Her hand reached out and stroked his lightly. Caringly. But there was caution within the movement.

_Pyramid Head will know._

The impression of Pyramid Woman towered in his mind, but through the lens of the Nurse’s vision. To her Pyramid Woman was a terrifying, terrible force in Silent Hill that one needed to run away from as quickly as possible, rather than stay. She was more like a force of nature than the other beings, and driven by a purpose higher than theirs. She was no one’s, for she was older than all of them.

He rubbed his forehead a little, thinking. This way of communication was strange, new, easier to understand than spoken word, while also making little sense. There was no speaking. But the great Silence around them ferried their words, thoughts, emotions, and impressions to each other was far more efficiency than any words ever could. And thanks to the Nurse, he could know somehow understand how to use it perfectly.

While he tried to think of a reply, the Nurse went on, twisting her hands in the blanket of the bed. .

_She is torn, however._

And he knew, as suddenly as starbursts flashing over the space of his mind, that what he and Pyramid Head were doing was not meant to be allowed. She had a duty that transcended personal desire. In fact, there had never even _been_ personal desire on her part before. And yet now there was And even worse, she was forsaking her sacred duties to spend to quench the fires of forbidden lust with him. _Because_ of him. One more thing he had distorted the balance of by merely existing. 

There was a edge of unease to the Nurse’s thoughts at that, and even he frowned. Something about him was different and so different that it was turning even a place like this out of alignment, even when nothing here seemed to follow any sort of sense or pattern. And yet it did, and the Nurse assured him of it. He was simply not from this place, so he would never truly understand how it worked. But even here, among strange monsters made from dreams, he was an anomaly. Belonging nowhere, and yet they trailed after him, bringing themselves to where they did not belong because of him.

He brought them something beyond what their world offered, or even something greater. But he did not even know how he was doing it, or if he liked the devotion so much.

He remembered how he saw himself in the mirror. Something between dead and alive, with eyes that glared out of his head like there was a fire burning inside of him. He did not know if he even felt alive or dead. How did one feel when they died but were left on? He looked like he might be dead, or should be dead, but was that an illusion too? Sometimes when he looked again, he thought he appeared different but could not say why.

And the Pale King…

He looked down at his note. At the man screaming of his sins, but unrepentant of them. Begging for forgiveness and simultaneously scorning it. Aware of his flaw and his sin, but still drinking from the cup that condemned him to his fate.

Was this man one of the many dead who were punished for what he had done? One of the last things he could write?

But no. Something stirred in him. Something told him that this was much, much worse.

He had to find Pyramid Head.


	4. Your Rain

He knew what he had to do now. Find Pyramid Head. She was a key to this whole place, in a far deeper way than he previously assumed. There were…pillars to this place. Many layers, but also many pillars that were holding everything up, bound together. A chessboard with kings and queens and bishops and knights and the entire rest of it.

He stood up from his bed, and immediately paused at what he noticed around him. The room was larger around him, now, the walls not pressed so closely against him. Larger than any of the other rooms in Wood Side Apartments, large enough that it made him wonder if it fit into the building’s plans to begin with. No way, with the structure of the outside, could this even be possible.

There were more things, as well. A wardrobe existed now, along with a much wider dresser. A carpet that was as pristine as new. Everything felt cleaner and more organized. A strange blight upon Silent Hill, where everything ruled to be twisted ad broken as imagination could possibly make it.

A smell reached him. Of soap? It was such a foreign smell to what he was used to—mold and dampness and rot and blood and miasma—that he turned to where it was coming from. The door to the private bathroom was slightly ajar, a gleam of warm light escaping through the crack.

The Nurse, as if understanding where his thoughts and attention had turned, looked as well. Then she got up and opened the door wider, and he could see beyond her into the bathroom itself. That was so utterly clean that he at first could barely believe where he was, and it was almost enough to make him forget that he was in Silent Hill. But the large bath topped with a small mountain of bubbles was the centerpiece of the room.

He stepped inside and was initially amazed by he heavy, hot air in the room, which had fogged up the mirror. He glanced at it and— _shadows dancing atop a writhing pyre while the walls wept red red red blood—_

He flinched and turned away, and Nurse’s hand came to rest on his shoulder comfortingly. He took a breath and nodded, and at her insistence began to strip his clothes off, feeling more like he was shedding some sort of old skin rather than just grimy garments. The more he revealed, the filthier he realized he had felt. He had been here, among the muck and blood and who-knew what else of this place for so long, it felt seeped into his very pores.

And yet that did not stop Nurse from admiring what she saw. He shivered a little, pleasantly, under her careful touch which never missed a single detail of his body, and he turned to meet her.

It was several minutes later before he finally was able to slip himself inside of the bathtub, though his spirits were very pleasant at the time, and he realized that the water had not grown cold at all in his absence. In fact it had not even gotten warm—it was still barely below scalding, just hot enough for him to handle.

With a hiss of pleasure he eased himself inside, and the breath he let out was one that seemed to come from deep down, somewhere in his gut rather than in his lungs. He rested against the edge of the tub and wondered to himself: how was this place able to accommodate his needs so well? How did it react to his thoughts without him even consciously thinking of them?

Nurse’s hands were on his shoulders, just like they had been moments before, except this time they were rubbing his skin, washing it in slow circles, spreading the soap around with her careful, loving strokes. He leaned into the touch, deeply enjoying the feeling, though he could not stop thinking bout the water. It felt strange.

Not in a bad way, though. It looked and smelled and tasted like water, but something about the way it touched his skin felt different. Like it lingered on him long after it had been wiped clean, almost like oil. But this was not thick like oil, but it seeped into him all the same.

Even though her hands felt wonderful against him, the Nurse probably understood that alone would not clean him like it was proper. She reached and grabbed a towel which was gray as fog and began scrubbed him with that, instead. He noticed that it did not really seem to be washing the grime off of him, though. The towel was not even dirty, nor was the water, but he still felt as if he was being cleansed. Not only of the feeling of filth but of doubts. Of hesitation, of confusion, even of the fear that lingered under the surface of his mind. It all sluiced away from him, making his breath light and his heart stronger the more she worked.

It was like a baptism. Cleansed and purified in water. His mind already felt sharper, focusing more easily on the task in front of him, sliding effortlessly into the role he was meant to be here. Outside of Silent Hill, and yet he was here for a reason all the same. It was simply up to him to discover why.

If he could get out of here, that was. There was an alluring, enchanting quality to the Nurse’s hands and how she handled him, which made him simply want to slouch in her hands and enjoy it until the end of time. But she had a purpose in mind just as him, and she prodded him to move himself to get himself into a proper position.

Finally he heaved himself up after she rinsed him one more time, feeling as if everything had been cleansed from him. He did not even need to dry himself off, as Nurse came with another dry towel and rubbed him carefully all over his body. He did not wish to put on the old clothes he had, as he could see several stains, most of them blood, and he had no idea how old many of them were.

He made his way into the room and his eyes immediately fell upon the wardrobe. He opened it and saw it filled with clothes, and pulled some out without looking. Gray pants, gray jacket, white shirt, black boots…plain, but he liked the plain. He liked the gray as well, it reminded him of the fog outside.

 _What will you do while I am gone?_ he asked Nurse as he dressed, for once curious about what she did while he was away. He knew she was not always around waiting for him, so she had to be off doing something.

Fear, uncertainty. Images of other Nurses about her, sharper, movements more abrupt and jerking, like puppets following strings. Their feet dragging on the ground, still dictated by the hive mind that bound them all together, crawling within the darkness and freezing when the light struck them.

She loved her sisters but… She feared them. She was different now, invariably different, and as time went on it began more and more obvious. She had been able to hide it before, but now that she was so permanently cut off from them it was impossible. She did not know what they would do, but—

Imagines of claws, of pipes, of splattering blood.

She did not know, but she knew enough to be afraid.

 _Stay here,_ he thought immediately. _It’s safe here._

He did not know how he knew that…but he did. He knew it could simply be his pure assumption based on the fact that he had never been disturbed by the monsters while in the room and had never found any waiting for him when he left—but it was deeper than that. This room felt like it was _his,_ no matter how strange that thought sounded.

He felt relief pouring from her, and she nodded enthusiastically. She pressed close to him and kissed him, and he kissed back just as eagerly. He felt…he was not sure. There was warmth, of deeper and darker things binding her and him and Silent Hill together as thick and deep as the blood in his veins, and he heard whispers upon the very edge of his consciousness, like an itch in his mind that he needed to scratch, as small as a grain of sand prodding his heel.

But ignoring that urge, he kissed her deeper, feeling _her_ drawing close to him as well. Not just in body, but in self. He had to break away, though he nodded to her, and locked the door behind him as he left.

He heard her scratching a little, and at first wondered what she was doing, but figured he would see when he got back. He knew that she would not destroy anything, so whatever it was, it could wait.

The door to the apartments opened silently when he pushed it, and clouds of mist immediately rolled around him. The fog seemed thicker today, and it was hard to see his own feet. Still, he clicked on the radio that he had clipped onto the front pocket of his jacket, tuned it until he heard the faint fuzz of static, and stepped out.

The leviathans of the buildings loomed around him, squatting on either side of the road, and he felt as if judgmental eyes peered down at him from the empty windows with every step. Everything here was so terribly empty—and yet not. There was an awareness to this place that never failed to make his spine pickle ever so slightly.

It was like the difference between being in an empty room, and being in a room where someone was sleeping. Despite the fact that the person was sleeping, you were aware of their presence, and they were ever so subtly aware of you in return.

Flakes of ash landed on his jacket, and he had already learned through experience to try and not brush them off. It would just make them crumble and smear across the fabric. The cool air of the mist kissed across his face, but left no dampness on him.

The radio crackled, static hissing louder from it, and he froze for a moment, listening hard until he heard the soft, fleshy slap against the bare road. Something squishing, visceral, dripping, and he carefully edged away from it and walked around wherever it was. He had learned that the monsters, except the dogs, had terrible eyesight most of the time, and as long as he walked softly and kept his distance, many of them would not even realize he was there.

He stayed away from the cars, though. He noticed several times dark shapes lurking under them, lying in wait with claws as long as his own fingers poised and ready.

Then, there was the sound of loud flapping, like canvas caught in a gale. He would have ignored it if he hadn’t been used to the deep silence by now, and if his radio had not suddenly burst out in an alarming crackle of noise.

Something dark was coming from _above,_ swooping down.

He threw himself to the side out of instinct, and the—creature, came flying by. He could not see much of anything about it except that the enormous wings stretched as wide as the entire street, and that the body was vaguely humanoid, and talons clutched at where he had been in an attempt to grab him, and a squall of rage burst from the creature as it came up empty. It flapped away, mist pooling and fleeing from the great thrusts of its wings, swirling and dancing, and then it was swallowed up.

It was not entirely gone, though. The radio had gone mostly silent, but when he strained his ears he could still hear, very faintly, the flapping of the wings far above his head. It was circling, waiting for another opportunity.

He crouched low, and slowly crept along the street.

The street, what he could see of it, was gradually losing familiarity as he continued. The buildings were the same kind, but at the same time he did not outright recognize them. Then he saw a signpost on the corner and peered at it.

Lindsay Street? Where was he, precisely? He did not recognize the name of this street. And in front of him the road…ended. He was at a T junction with only a wall distantly in front of him, and the Lindsay Road stretching out in either direction to be swallowed up in the mist.

There was a hard, growling, crackling roar from the radio, which was the only warning he had before there was a loud groaning coming from what felt like every direction—and they came.

They melted out of the mist as if they were formed from it entirely. They looked far more like people that anything yet he had seen of Silent Hill so far, and he had no idea if these were even monsters—or something else.

The monsters were twisted beings, made so by corruption and born from bricks of ideas made flesh, but these—these had been people once. They were dressed in their regular clothes, but they were floating several feet off the ground and he could almost clearly see right through them. Blood stained their clothes, dripping from their throats, or from their skulls, hands coated in blood, or clothes torn open to reveal bloody entrails hanging out—they had all died terrible, violent deaths, or had been the cause of such deaths themselves.

In a way, they might have been even worse than the monsters.

Their faces were all twisted in horrible madness and agony, and they drifted to him in a closing ring around him.

Immediately he turned to run, but hardly got several steps before he heard the loud, hard flapping above him again and felt the great drafts of wind being blown into his face. He threw himself down again and heard the claws snapping the air somewhere above him, loudly and deadly and terrifying in their _clack!_

The beast screeched and flapped its wings, then he saw it land in front of him on huge talons that grew grotesquely out of eerily human feet—and he looked up into its face.

What little there was of it. He had assumed, from seeing the creature’s back, that it had a head. What he had mistaken for the head he could now see was simply a knob on the back of its _true_ head. The rest of it was a greatly muscled, rippling flesh that was necessary for operating its enormous, sharp beak that was as long as his arm, touching the creature’s stomach when it tilted its head down. Large, bulbous eyes as large as his fist rolled its skull like fish eyes, and stared down at him. They were entirely black.

Pteranodon, he immediately thought, and wondered why. He didn’t even know what the word meant.

It drew its head back, and he threw himself to the side and barely avoided its beak drilling through his skull. He looked and gasped at the hoard of the ghosts coming upon him, their bloody fingers grasping for him, closing on his clothes and passing right through them—

He heard a screeching, scraping noise that made the ground tremble underneath it, and even the very mist seemed to quiver around it. The flying monster and the sinners around him reacted to it immediately, jerking and forgetting about him entirely as the beast tried frantically to fly away—

But it could not escape the wide blade that erupted from its chest, accompanied by a loud, terrible cracking as its spine was severed from the force of it. A crimson flower of blood sprayed outward from the wound, drenching his face and hair, and more poured down the creature’s body as it jerked in terrible spasms. Then the blade moved, slicing the body in half. As it crumbled to the ground, he saw Pyramid Head standing above him.

She ignored his presence entirely, or so it felt like as she grabbed her sword and swung it, slicing at the specters around him. But despite the fact that it passed through their bodies, they still screamed in terrible agony before vanishing in a flash of ash and fire and blood. She stepped over him and kept swinging and swinging, making short work of them until the street was silent once more.

Carefully, slowly, he got to his feet, never taking his eyes off of her. He felt that her gaze was on him as well.

He remembered how he had spoken with the Nurse, and reached for that feeling. Reached for the knowledge that everything that walked within Silent Hill was bound to each other, the town itself being the chain around them. He thought about speaking on a deeper level than words, on emotions and thoughts that existed long before there were words to describe them.

 _Thank you,_ he said, in a wave of gratitude that he pushed upon her.

He felt her shock in response to the knowledge that he had learned how to speak Silence, and—

And he nearly had to sit down from the impressions that he touched upon as he picked them up from her mind.

She was _old._ She was so old that he would have almost believed that she was older than Silent Hill itself if he did not see right from her mind that it was not true but—there was an ancient, terrible age and depth to her that he found hard to even understand. Nurse had been easy, she was like a pond, deeper and yet clear, easy to grasp. Pyramid Head was a terrible, dark ocean where the bottom and deepest knowledge lurked something pumping, dark, and bloody. Fashioned of blood and iron, and rope, and rust, and dirt, and wood, and nails, and bone, and death death death. What she had seen, what she had done, what she was made to do— _be the Executioner._

Red. Red. He heard and felt and tasted the Red of her, the Red importance, the Red that even drenched the Pyramid that was her head, and he realized with this impression that it was not red from the rivers of blood she had spilled—but it had always been so.

She had been crafted in and for Silent Hill like the rest of the creatures, but the others, the Nurse and the dogs and the Air Screamer, even the ghosts of the sinners—they were small. They were so insignificant in the larger scheme of things it was almost incomprehensible. But she was chained to the very soul of Silent Hill so deeply, so intensely, that she had never wavered in her duty.

Until now. Until _him._ He had come and she had seen him and, and they had—his mind flooded with the memories, and she had tried not to fall to them, but she could not help herself. With the sex they had been having, it merely felt like she had been tearing at the chains that held her in place and hurting herself in the process.

He felt her speaking to him. But like the Nurse she did not use words. She did not need words, not did she ever communicate in such a fashion. That was for humans.

But it was a louder, clearer voice that drove the air right from his lungs. It was like a bell clanging in his mind from the inside out, making his skin prickle from the inside.

She thought about killing him. A part of her _wanted_ to kill him, because this way she was certain that he would be gone and she could then focus on her sacred duty once more.

He frowned a little, and looked deeply at her. _Why have you not?_ he asked, clearly. _You have me here now, why have you not?_

Immediately he was bombarded by images and memories and—and flesh, hot and sweating and heavy, of his own face above her, pounding her and feeding her lust with his movements and—

“Ahh—” he said, knowing he was hard, it was impossible to hide, and he had to snap himself out of their communion with a jolt that was much like breaking out of the surface of water to find air. But that did not mean the images had totally left his mind, but at least they were coming from his own head rather than coming from Pyramid Head with all of the emotions and impressions attached.

He was not precisely in communication with her, not fully, but he could still feel the amusement seeping from her. If she could, she would be laughing.

“You did that on purpose,” he said, scowling.

She mended the Silence between them, her rich amusement flooding him. Then, she began to walk, and he felt her desire for him to join her, and he did so easily. He turned off his radio. The scrape of her sword alone would drive off the monsters, as none of them were foolish enough to get close.

He poured his new knowledge and questions on her, showing what the Nurse had told her, showing her the bits of people’s lives he had come across in the apartments, the book he had read at first then could not—and felt her responses in his mind clearly.

Yes, the executing was her duty and her purpose. And yes, he was not of Silent Hill in any of the ways that everything else was, monsters and not. Frustratingly she did not clarify what the “not monsters” were, but he only let it slide because he still had other questions to ask.

 _I have upset the balance, though?_ He asked. _Twisted things?_

No, she assured him. A denial that surprised him, as it seemed that was what Nurse was hinting at. He felt her disgust but she did explain. Silent Hill was not a beast. Silent Hill was an ocean, a storm. It could not be offended by his actions and his presence. It only punished those that tried to defy its currents. No matter what he did, as long as he flowed with Silent Hill, he could do as he pleased.

_But the monsters?_

That was something else entirely. He got the impression of—layers, almost, but layers implied that they were on top of one another and did not cross. There were rules of one thing and rules of another. Not like oil and water. Salt and water. Rules of salt and rules of water, but bound together.

But that did not mean certain vessels could not navigate it.

 _Am I one?_ he asked, holding out his wrist, and the scars that were etched upon them.

She paused, stiffened, and peered closer at his wrist. He did not even need to be bound to her through Silence to understand how intrigued she was at the Mark, and how much that intrigue pounded into his consciousness.

That grain of sand was back, except this time it was a mountain that loomed in his consciousness, wanting him to do—something. He ignored it as best as he could and focused on what she was doing, that it gnawed at him incessantly.

She was disturbed by the Mark, that was clear. The more she looked at it, the more uneasy she became.

The Church would have answers.

He started a little, blinking in surprise. Thankfully the mountain was gone. _The…?_

She went on as if she had not heard him. The Church was a holy place filled with knowledge. But she could not enter with him, she was not holy.

_Why? Is your duty not sacred?_

She indicated to herself. Covered in the blood of monsters and sinners.

He bent down, carried by a whim he did not understand, and licked her arm of the blood, leaving a clean strip behind. _You look clean and pure to me,_ he thought, showing her the skin.

She started, shock pounding his mind in one clear wave, before suddenly he was being thrown down on his back and she was climbing on top of him, her wild passion obliterating everything else within his mind.

His hands gripped her hips, hard, and moved with her as she rode him harder than she ever had before. He panted, groaning loudly and moving with her, and this time he did not at all care of the blood soaking through his clothes from the freshly killed monsters around them. He looked up at her, and marveled at her beauty in its purest form.

_What is your name?_

Lost. Lost in the depths of Silent Hill. No, in a place deeper than Silent Hill. In a place where reality and unreality merge, and the center of Creation births the universe.

He did not understand, but he doubted he had the ability to.

Why did he bed the stuff of nightmares? Why did he keep coming back?

 _It might be because I am in love,_ he confessed to her, and her grip on him tightened.

* * *

She led him to the Church later, a spring in her step, though it was a little dampened by the scraping of her blade. Ironically it was not all that far from the Wood Side Apartments, but he had never tried to go too far down the side streets for fear that he would get lost and did not have many things to defend himself with. It was down a street, and then he could see the name of it was Martin Street, and tried to remember its name.

It was not long, but Pyramid Head’s steps slowly as they got closer. He saw the chapel rising from the mist long before they stood under its shadow, and apart of him was surprised to see that it looked like a regular chapel as far as he could tell.

He did not know what a “regular chapel” looked like, and yet at the same time…he did know. It felt like it could be one. There was a sun at the top, though. He felt as if that one did not fit, but he did not know why.

Then a memory came to him.

 _A man offered a serpent to the sun and prayed for salvation,_  
A woman offered a reed to the sun and asked for joy.  
Feeling pity for the sadness that had overrun he earth, God was born from these two people. 

It _felt_ as if something had clicked into place, and that the world around him jolted with it. He jolted and looked to Pyramid Head, to find that she was looking at him. She nodded, once, and looked up to the steps leading up to the Church.

They needed to enter. But he needed to do it first, so she could follow him.

He frowned a little at that, but he also got the feeling that she would not be able to enter otherwise.

 _Of course,_ he said, and began to take the steps up the Church.


	5. Walk on Vanity Ruins

Every step brought him higher and higher, like he was being raised from the ground to ascend to the heavens above, but he had barely taken more than a few of them. His eyes were fixed on the wide double doors above him, unable to tell if they were made from iron or wood—it was dark-colored, that was it.

Yet the closer he got to the Church, the more uneasy he began to feel. He was not afraid, but he felt as if there was a…sensation rippling across him, as if it bled from the building like heat from a fire. Something dangerous, something dark, something sharp. Black thorns, the edge of razors, barbed wire, claws and fangs and blood, rust and dirt and something sliding across his skin like skittering cockroaches.

He paused and had to swallow for a moment, glaring at the door, before he went forward again. Pyramid Head’s gaze was on his back, he could feel it, and in the Silence he could feel her observing him and sharing his impressions.

This was normal. The Church was a place of power. Things churned around here like a whirlpool and was spat out again as waves of waves from the sea.

 _Is this the source of what is going on here?_ he thought, feeling as if he was wading through a current to get to the door.

No, not at all. It is just one more face of what Silent Hill was.

He stopped in front of the doors, staring for a moment, then he turned around and looked at her. She was precisely where he had left her, but with the mist so thick around them he could only see her vague shadow, with her great pyramid-shaped helm identifying her.

Go. She would follow him when he opened the way for her. When he tainted the most holy of sanctuaries with his steps and presence. When he brought his self into a place that was always the same and never changed.

He turned back to the doors and grabbed the handle to one of them. It was cold. Icy, freezing, and he pushed it open.

Light and shadow greeted his eyes as the crack of the door widened, and a wave of warmth rushed out. Warm as blood, sliding around him, and he breathed in a deep breath that smelled of burning candle wax and old wood, and dust. He took a step inside, then another.

At first it was a complete shock to him, the sight that greeted his eyes. He looked around, tracing the imprints into his memory.

Despite the dust, it was the first place he had ever seen in the entire town that was not actually in a state of decay. There was a rug beneath his feet, which had been swept before, and it led all the way to the end of the room, which ended at a pedestal. It was a small thing though, and its true glory was in the three giant stained-glass windows behind it, filled with brilliance and color that stunned him after the endless gray of Silent Hill.

The central window depicted a woman in a white dress, with a red skirt and more red fabric around her, draping over her arms and covering her eyes. The sun was shining atop her head, giving rays on the ground below her feet.

To the left of her, a window depicted a man in a white robe with a green sash. His hair was dark and his chiseled face handsome, with a halo of light shining from behind his head. Within his gentle hands he held a snake, and his eyes shone with care as he looked down upon the creature.

The right window depicted a woman in a white dress, with a shawl of blue around her shoulders. Her hair was red, and in her hands rested a long reed. She carried it with gentleness and devotion, and her eyes were cast down, almost as if in sorrow.

He stared, feeling something in his chest that he could not understand, a stirring that all at once felt like emotion, but also something higher than emotion. When he tore his eyes away it was with reluctance, and he looked around to see what had surprised him so much in the first place.

Other people. No monsters, no ghosts, no spirits or impressions or shadows. Just regular people, solid and real. They were sitting in the pews that led right up to the pedestal in the front of the room, bent over in silent prayer. None of them seemed to notice his appearance at all, as if he did not exist. For a moment he wondered: did he? Was he real to other people? Or was he some sort of invisible specter? Could only the monsters see him?

“Who are you?”

The voice was a woman’s, much louder than he ever would have expected, and he flinched from the suddenness of it. Ad then there was a slither of movement, a shifting sound of dozens of people turning in their pews as they stared at him with wide, frightened eyes. The candlelight glittered across their eyes, making them suddenly look feral and untamed, and many of them he noticed were in as good of a shape as he was. Worn and relatively clean, but still with marks upon them.

The woman who spoke moved, coming from the front of the room. She had been kneeling in front of the pedestal, so he had not seen her there the first time he looked. Her dress was a deep blue, draping modestly down to her very feet, with long sleeves, and buttoned up to her neck. Her hair was piled into a bun atop her head, shining mahogany in the candlelight. Despite her size, which was rather small compared to his, she glared up at him fiercely, yet stately, and he for once he had the truest sensation of being an _outsider._

She approached him, unafraid, with the ripples of her dress brushing gently over the carpet, and he could _feel_ the blood-darkness seeping from every movement she made. Her eyes glared at him, filled with fire, and life, and a hatred that ran so deep it was cold, fire turned into crystal.

“Well?” she asked, but her voice was pleasant and almost caring, after a fashion. “There is no need to be shy and mute. Who are you?”

“I do not know,” he said truthfully. Then, he pulled up one of his sleeves to show her the Mark on his wrist. “But I was told you could tell me.”

Her eyes widened, and then frowned in pure confusion, one that was echoed by himself as he saw her very clearly trying to understand what it was on his wrist. Did Pyramid Head get it wrong? Maybe the Church did not know what this was about? And yet she had been so certain, not a single guess or doubt in her mind about it.

“This is insane,” she breathed out, and he noticed now that there was a one of fear in her voice. She looked straight up at him again. “ _Who are you?”_

“I don’t know,” he repeated, feeling a flare of annoyance and pettiness at her repeating questions. “Who are _you?”_

“Christabella,” she replied, the name almost automatic, before she seemed to catch herself and glared a little at him. Then, her eyes widened again, and the color drained from her face, turning her skin almost grayish in her horror.

**_I will kill for you. As a sign of matrimony._ **

Pyramid Head’s voice _thundered_ inside of his mind, each and every word a drumbeat that pounded at his heart and ribcage, draped in rust and blood and screams that ripped an undercurrent throughout her words. It left him gasping, left him shaking from the incredible force behind him, like wave after wave of an ocean battering him against the rocks on the shore.

And yet, she had spoken _words._ Not just fed her feelings and impressions and knowledge to him, she had spoken words to him just like he spoke words to her. His body was shaking and the depth of his shock was thrilling through his veins, but he was the only one who was standing still.

The other churchgoers— _sinners—_ were leaping to their feet, gasping and screaming and nearly trampling over each other in their haste to get out of the pews and get away—but Pyramid Head’s huge frame was filling the door and they could obviously not run past her. For the first time since he had seen her, she was not dragging her sword behind her in one hand. She was holding it in front of her, both hands on the hilt, the point driving down into the ground. The light behind her cast her long, terrible shadow down the entire chapel, following the path of the rug, just barely touching the pedestal.

“The Executioner,” Christabella breathed, taking several steps back. “How have you come to be in here?!” But even as she said so, her eyes flew to him, and he knew that she knew. “This is a holy place!”

The Silence stretched around him, spreading wider and wider until he felt as if there was a vast empty space around him, devoid of even air. When he breathed, he felt as if the air was still and stale.

She had never felt this before. This depth of feeling. He had brought it to her, and he was the reason she was feeling this way. Stepping out of her place, stepping into something new and terrible and…frightening. She had never been frightened before in her life. But she _wanted_ to plunge into it with him. Wanted to drown with him.

And with that Nurse Whore too, if she had too.

He laughed. He had not laughed in—he had no idea. But it was glorious and beautiful, and he saw the others staring at him as if he had gone completely insane. He probably had. They had all stopped, milling in place in fright, unsure of what to do. Not knowing what might set him, or Pyramid Head off, wondering what the two of them wanted. After all, the only thing they had really done was show up.

He nodded. _Do it,_ he told Pyramid Head, opening his heart and letting her feel his love, his warmth, his wild, willing want and need to plunge into the depths of insanity with her. And he took a step forward.

Because she was behind him, he did not see her move. But he saw her shadow move. Saw her lift up her sword, and saw its long shadow play across the floor, and the people around him began shrieking in terror.

Warm blood splashed and cascaded across one side of his body as Pyramid Head’s sword split the body of one of the sinners directly in half, from his head to his groin. The two halves fell to the side, a great fountain of blood pooling out, tainting and spilling across the floor.

The screaming climbed in pitch, and like hysterical cattle they began stampeding over each other in their haste to get away. Christabella herself had vanished and he had no idea where she had gone, as he could not see her blue dress anywhere among the flurry. On and on Pyramid Head’s sword swung, each one finding a new target that she never needed to hit more than once, her body and blows a fury and storm that could not be contains.

And he kept walking. As if in the eye of the hurricane, the sinners who were running and screaming, and Pyramid Head who was swinging over and over, none of them hit him. They all passed within mere inches of him, as if they could not touch him.

The crowd abruptly parted, and he could see a spray of blood following him as well. He felt Pyramid Head’s joy in the slaughter and destruction, felt the beating, heated blood lust of battle, and sometimes even felt as if he, himself, was wielding the sword.

He blinked and the pedestal was in front of him, blood dripping down its sides. He stepped up to it, and looked out over at the carnage before him.

With the pews along both sides of the aisle, there was no easy way to get around Pyramid Head, as she took up most of the aisle with the sheer size of her body. Some of the churchgoers tried frantically to clamber over the pews in order to get around her, but one swipe of her long sword would cut them down. Several limbs and pieces of corpses littered the seats and floor, and bright red blood flowed freely in ever-wider spreading pools. Some of them were moaning and writhing across the floor, spasming in their throes of death.

He watched as Pyramid Head snatched the hair of one of the women as she tried to run by, and stabbed her with her sword. Stabbed her so deeply that it severed her spine, and nearly cut her in half.

The Pale King took his eyes away and looked at the pedestal, frowning at what he found on it.

A book. A book similar to the one that he found in the woman’s apartment. Or—

He placed his hand into his jacket pocket. His heart leaped in his chest when he felt that it was empty, devoid of the book that he was used to having in there by now.

Why had it suddenly appeared here now? Why did it disappear only to reappear in a place that it knew he would be in?

He took it again, and though it looked precisely the same as it did before, he noted that it was heavier. Sliding it into his pocket, he looked around more, and noticed something that made him frown.

There were pictures along the walls. Or, rather, murals. He could not see them very easily, as they were inside of shadowed alcoves, but from what he could see, it made him want to draw closer.

His feet moved, almost against his will, as he went over to the closest one to his right. The carpet squelched under his feet as he stepped upon it, as so much blood had soaked into it. And even when he stepped off of it, he was walking along the pools of growing blood that was spreading across the floor.

The mural came into his view. The mirror to the scene around him startled him, and he glanced back at the room behind him to make sure he was not imagining things before he turned to the mural.

There were men and women writhing upon a scorched and dead ground, expressions of intense suffering and grief on their faces. Their eyes were open in wide fear and hopelessness, mouths opened in soundless, endless howls of agony their contorted hands were raised skyward, as if asking to supplication from a heaven that did not answer.

Red fabric flowed around them, around their hands and bodes, and raised skyward as well.

It felt…as if he knew it. He knew, he _knew_ it, there was some sort of door in his head that he was pounding on, jerking on the knob and trying to open it, and then his eyes fell to the plaque beneath the massive picture.

_In the beginning, people had nothing.  
Their bodies ached, and their hearts held nothing but hatred.  
They fought endlessly, but death never came.  
They despaired, stuck in the eternal quagmire. _

And the door _flew_ open.

They were _words._ Not the crawling, strange text that constantly shifted in the book that he could not read—because the church members could not read it either.

Excitement pounded through him, and he nearly ran to the next mural, shoving a moaning, stumbling man out of the way, and ignoring the splash of blood that followed swiftly after.

This mural had a man and a woman upon it, different from how they were depicted on the stained glass, but he knew they were the same. The man here was nude, except for a sash of cloth that hid his hips, and the snake grasped in his hands was larger, and twined all down his body. The woman was clothed, her hair hidden under her shawl, and her reed was clasped carefully in her lap, and her face was turned towards the sky along with the man’s.

He knew what the mural would say, but he read it anyway.

_A_ _man offered a serpent to the sun and prayed for salvation.  
A woman offered a reed to the sun and asked for joy.  
Feeling pity for the sadness that had overrun the earth, God was born from those two people. _

The screams had stopped by now. All he could hear was the occasional gasp, moan, and twitch of someone’s body. The dripping of blood onto the floor, patterning quietly and thickly. The air stank of it, of metal and blood and carnage, the sick smell of death, tinged with a sweetness that made his throat wish to close up in protest at it.

He continued onward. He cared little for the blood on his shoes when he felt as if his mind was opening, as if something was becoming clearer to him with each new line he read—and he knew now that he would see the story in full, unlike the mere hint he had been offered earlier.

The next mural made him pause in surprise, and he stared and stared, and he knew Pyramid Head was watching him, watching his reaction and evaluating it. Knowing that he needed to learn this.

God was not what he expected. He did not know what he expected, he had no prior knowledge of what God was, but the fact that she was a woman surprised him.

It was impossible to mistake her for anything else. She was the centerpiece of this mural, and wore a dress of the most vivid red imaginable, more bright than the fresh blood that stained the room they were currently in—and yet not a drop of it was on the picture, or any of them really. Her red dress flowered around her and above from her, streams of red fabric reaching into the heavens, intertwining with her equally red hair. A single hand she held up raised, as if to speak to the group of people who were around her, dressed in filthy rags and bowing to her, reaching out to her, and every single one of their faces were lined in the purest, radiant joy.

_God made time and divided it into day and night.  
God outlined the road to salvation and gave people joy.  
And God took endless time away from the people. _

He stared, long and hard, until his very eyes started to hurt, and then he turned away, and saw that he had come to the end of the wall. When he turned around, he saw Pyramid Head standing there, waiting for him.

 _God is a part of this, isn’t she?_ he asked.

The other wall. He needed to finish.

He blinked and realized that there were indeed murals along the opposite wall, mirroring the position of each. And then it clicked that they were all supposed to be read in a counter-clockwise order. He continued forward, feeling Pyramid Head fall into step with him until he reached the next one.

God filled the picture, her arms spread wide, her pose that of a reclining lady, despite the fact she did not seem to be sitting upon anything. Her red dress and red hair flowed from her in streams, streams of fire and blood, or rain, and he began to wonder if the streams of red were meant to show her power in some way?

But then his eyes caught something. Two children, hardly older than toddlers, peering out from under her arms. It was impossible to determine their age or gender, and the only truly distinguishing features they had was that one wore garments the same vivid red color as God’s, and the other wore a burnished gold set of robes. They stared at him, it felt like. As if their painted eyes were still aware of him, and watched him an every movement he made.

For some reason he could not meet their eyes, and he dropped his to the plaque.

_God created beings to lead people in obedience to Her.  
The red God, Xuchilbara,  
The yellow God, Lobsel Vith,  
Many Gods and Angels.  
Finally, God set out to create _ _Paradise, where people would be happy just by being there._

His breath came out slowly as he thought, and thought. As if thinking through molasses. _Do you know them?_ he asked. _The Yellow God and Red God?_

The Yellow God. Valtiel, he was called here.

He did not know if he should have felt horror or elation at that. Clearly they were made by God herself, so even if being a god they were beneath her in power, but still…the idea of gods being around here was unsettling, to say the least.

_And the Red God?_

She did not know, and she did not know why. Silent Hill worked as Silent Hill wished, and if there were some things it wanted hidden, from even the most powerful denizens, then there was nothing anyone could say or do about it.

_Except God._

This time, she did not answer him. Then, he felt her urging him on, to read more, to finish the story.

So he went, trailing through the cooling blood that was sticking to his shoes, making a sticky sound every time he stepped, and finding the next mural waiting for him.

It was a shock from the others he had seen so far, so different in tone that he had to slow and take it in.

God was still the centerpiece, but in a cruel and twisted away. She was laying upon a bed, her dress and hair still decorating her radiant frame, but her eyes were closed and her arms were flat at her sides. He might have assumed she was sleeping, if not for the expressions of fear and grief on the people who surrounded her bedside, and how some of the painted figures were openly weeping into their hands at the sight.

_But there, God's strength ran out, and She collapsed.  
All the world's people grieved this unfortunate event.  
Yet God breathed Her last.  
She returned to the dust, promising to come again. _

His skin tingled lightly, his hair standing on end. “God is dead?” he asked out loud, puzzled. What kind of a God was she if she was dead?

Yes. And a very powerful one.

_She died trying to created Paradise._

**_Yes._ **

He shook from her voice, and caught his breath again. God was dead, and yet these people very clearly worshipped her. Worshipped her other gods and angels, too, who brought them the teachings that she had laid out for them. She had promised to come again, but she was not here _now._

Was she?

But then, Pyramid Head had confirmed that she had died, so if something had happened to change that, he doubted that she would even talk about God being dead to begin with.

There was one more mural to see. One more until he came back around to the pedestal, and ended where he began. It could not be coincidence.

He went, each step feeling heavier than the last, heavy with revelations, heavy with the knowledge that was pouring into him, several lines of thoughts and images that were swimming in the back of his mind, flitting through him but unable to be focused on for long periods of time. They were like smoke that dashed away from his hands the moment he tried to grab them.

This picture did not show God. Because she was gone and dead. But there was a man reading from a long piece of parchment, his hand stretched out to a table in front of him which was covered in a a white cloth, with several bottles atop it. Next to him was a woman, dressed in a white shawl with her hands clasped together in prayer, and next to her was a younger girl, blooming into her young womanhood. Her hair was pinned up and her dress lovely, if plain, and her hands were also placed in prayer. Just as all the sinners in this church had been doing just moments ago.

He read the final plaque.

_So God hasn't been lost.  
We must offer our prayers and not forget our faith.  
We wait in hope for the day,  
When the path to Paradise will be opened. _

There was a long moment filled with nothing but his heart thudding, until he released it in a long, low breath. He stood up, feeling at once both drained and yet filled with energy. He wanted to sit down, but he knew even if he had a perfectly clean chair somewhere he would be utterly incapable of it.

_They believe God will come back._

Indeed they did.

_Why did you call them sinners?_

Because they have forgotten God and Her teachings. They twist God’s ideals to fit a version of their own truth. God always demanded loyalty and love, but what they do is neither loyalty nor love. God could be cruel and demanding and vicious, but so are all Queens.

He rubbed his eyes a little, feeling as if his head was about to explode. The contrary depictions of God—both loving and cruel, harsh and merciful, the Sun and yet the Darkness—stretched his limits. Yet she was fire and she was blood, and there was something sinister about how her red dress and hair flowed around her in all of her pictures that left him uneasy.

_Did she bring people joy?_

She did. That knowledge was deeply-rooted and endless, and utterly unshakable.

_Why? How can she be both cruel and kind at the same time?_

Hardly anyone can be summed up so shallowly, and so simply. Not people, and especially not God.

A small smile twitched to life on his face. _You got me there,_ he admitted, turning to face her. She was covered in fresh blood, again, and he swore she was standing taller than he remembered her being before. There was almost a sense of her even _relishing_ in what she had done, relishing in her new freedom, but he could feel that was not entirely true. She was frightened by what was happening, but she was so wrapped up in it that she could not stop a all. She did not even want to.

 _You look beautiful,_ he said with a smirk, and he saw her heft up her sword. Only to lay it in one of the pews, knocking over a leg onto the ground, where it landed with a strange thump.

Then she reached for him.


End file.
